Services Partners Should Take a Look at

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| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Services Partners Should Take a Look at

Been reading a bunch of press releases about feature announcements. Yawn! So I decided to poke around and see what services that are interesting for partners. I know you don't have time to look at everything, so here are a few.

If you read this blog last month, then you know first up will be SD-WAN. This technology is going to change things for carriers and customers. This tech will allow customers to have monitoring, analytics, failover and a view into their WAN. It won't matter what pipe - 4G, 5G, fixed wireless, copper, fiber, cable modem - the customer will have a layer of monitoring and transparency that wasn't available before.

SD-WAN is going to allow even small offices to have disaster recovery with a choice of broadband - DSL, cable or 4G. Packet shaping, load balancing and more.

We looked at TelePacific, Velocloud, Escessa and Aryaka last month. EarthLink rolled it out (Mettel did too) with talk about one box (one appliance on the customer premise) will be the router, firewall, switch, et al. Simplifying the borders with SD-WAN. It all goes back to the SDN control panel at the carrier. If it all rolls out as planned, this will be the next Integrated T1 for CLECs.

Monitoring circuits is in. A couple of master agencies have bought in. AireSpring offers AireNMS (monitoring) for its circuits. SD-WAN will provide that built-in.

CenturyLink launched something that looks like SD-WAN (and they talk about an orchestration layer which is SDN talk). They launched "Runner, a configuration management and orchestration service that works across hybrid-IT architectures and diverse cloud environments." [CPonline]

SMS will come up often - in Push-to-talk technology as well as on landlines. This will extend the usefulness of copper for the ILECs. SMS will also be a part of the contact center platform. Companies will want customer service reps to be able to handle SMS/text as well as social media communications. We just saw this with MITEL's features PR. Vonage buying Nexmo (and twilio set to IPO) suggest that SMS via API is growing.

Take text and add AI (artificial intelligence) for businesses to automate answering frequently asked questions, like hours, directions, parking, daily specials, events, etc. There are a few companies in this including Thomas Howe's KISST and a former ITEXPO exhibitor, Biztexter.

Not many folks jumped on the MDM (mobile device management_ wagon. Well, after MDM leader, AirWatch, was acquired by VMware some were skeptical. In 2014, there were signs that it would change desktop management for laptops and iPads (see here). Next a consulting firm, CapGemini, looked at what they had to help them design this product called Workspace One . It takes the BYOD mess and adds some security and organization to it by delivering and managing any app on any device via enterprise mobility management. Think about the way you can sign-in across Android devices to see the same apps. Kind of like that mixed with desktop-as-a-service type thinking. CapGemini white labels it (see pdf). I wonder who else will?

Congress just got hit with Ransonware. Cyber-security and data backup will become critical for businesses. XO took a step towards this with its XO Site Securitythat integrates firewall and threat intelligence technology from Fortinet and managed security services from BAE Systems. (No idea why XO is NOW rolling out new products. They will be Verizon this time next year!)

BitTitan knows that Microsoft will own a good chunk of the business market with Azure, Skype for Business, Office365 and more (There are a number of Platinum and Gold Microsoft partners beefing up their Office365 practice now.). They added an Upsell engine! Plus are rolling out OneDrive for Off365. Microsoft just announced that they will revamp Sharepoint to compete with Slack and Dropbox.

SLACK. (That is all.)



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